Feminist beer is challenging commercial sexism in a whole new way
It’s 2015, but if you look at most beer commercials, you could be fooled into thinking that it’s still the 1950s. The gender stereotypes in advertisements for beer are so common you can probably conjure up the typical commercial spot right now: Dudes hanging out, girls in bikinis, and super-cold cans of mass-market brews.
But, no surprise to anyone of legal drinking age, is that women drink and enjoy beer too. And having sexist nonsense shoved in our faces isn’t a great enticement to pick up a particular six-pack.
Which is why Brazilian advertising creatives 65/10 have decided to roll out a feminist beer advertising model. Even the company’s name is a nod to their feminist mission: the 65 is the percentage of Brazilian women who don’t feel represented in ads, while just 10 percent of ad agency creatives are women.
The group introduced Cerveja Feminista, an Irish red ale with a label marked by a symbol for feminist equality.
“The typical Brazilian beer ad — and we’re talking about big brands with big money here — shows a semi naked standard-beauty woman being harassed by men,” 65/10 co-founder Thais Fabris told Fast Company. “She is either the waitress in the bar, a girl on the beach, or a prize the men get for drinking that beer. For us, it has many dangerous aspects, since it objectifies women and enables sexual harassment on a daily basis, on mass media. Even craft beers, which are also becoming more popular here, follow that path, with names like ‘Fatlicious’ or ‘Forbidden Lady.’”
The group chose a red ale to combat the idea of lighter beers as feminine and darker ones as more masculine. Of course, Fabris and her colleagues know that producing a beer with “feminist” on the label isn’t going to fix a pervasive problem within a huge industry. But they hope that it will at least open up the conversation.
“Our hope is that, once you put a beer on the table with ‘Feminist’ written on it, people will have no other subject to discuss,” she added.
Quite frankly, she might be right. If a feminist lager wound up on our table the conversation would certainly turn to it. And if the end goal here is gender equality then we are right on board and ready to order our very first cerveja feminista. Shocking, we know, that you can be a lady, a feminist, and a beer lover too. It’s time for beer companies to get on board with that truth.
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